An initiative of the National Academy of Public Administration, and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and the Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, Princeton University Oral History Program Series: Governance Traps Interview No: D1 Interviewee: Nasir el-Rufai Interviewer: Graeme Blair and Daniel Scher Date of Interview: 16 June 2009 Location: Washington, DC U.S.A. Innovations for Successful Societies, Bobst Center for Peace and Justice Princeton University, 83 Prospect Avenue, Princeton, New Jersey, 08540, USA www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Governance Traps Oral History Program Interview number: D-1 ______________________________________________________________________ BLAIR: Just to confirm for the tape that you are consenting to the interview, it is a volunteer interview and you have read our consent documents. EL-RUFAI: You make it sound like you are asking me to marry you and it is a big decision, I consent. [laughter] BLAIR: Thank you very much for agreeing to share your views with us and with other reform leaders that we will disseminate this to. Until very recently you were involved in Nigeria’s reform program at several levels, first in the Bureau of Public Enterprises and then as Minister for Abuja and in several informal capacities as part of President (Olusegun) Obasanjo’s economic reform team. We’d like to speak to you about these experiences first as a member of the larger reform team and then more particular questions about your experience as Minister for Abuja. Before we get into those details if you could speak briefly a little bit about your own career, your first jobs in government, how you got started and then the events that led to your participation in Obasanjo’s economic reform team and getting to be the Minister for Abuja. EL-RUFAI: It is quite strange how one plans one’s life and then it comes out another way. I studied quantity surveying in college. Quantity surveying is a profession unknown in the US but quite common in the Commonwealth countries, Britain and so on. Basically what quantity surveyors do is they work with architects and engineers and forecast the cost of construction projects and monitor the costs during construction and keep accounts of the books. So quantity surveyors are like construction economists and accountants. So that’s what I studied. I had no plans whatsoever to be in public service. I started my business a couple of years after graduating, a consulting business, and we targeted real estate developers and financial institutions that do lots of buildings. I became quite comfortable very early in my life and I was quite happy. The country was running fairly okay. Nigeria has never been run very well, we had a succession of bad leaders, but things were okay. I mean one could earn a living and levels of security were decent. But things began to go really wrong in the ‘90s such that by 1996, I figured out the tenuous limits of the assumption that if you make enough money you can insulate yourself from failures of government. Because in Nigeria, the government became more of a problem to its citizens than a facilitator of achievement of one’s potentials, most people would say okay, if I make enough money I’ll be able to have my own water supply. You know you drill a borehole and put a water treatment plant so you get clean water in your home. If you make enough money you can buy gasoline- powered generating set so if the pubic supply goes off you switch on your own private supply. Basically that’s what we all thought in those days. As the country began to deteriorate slowly in the ‘70s, in the ‘80s and then more rapidly in the ‘90s, everybody’s mind frame was okay, I will try to achieve financial independence and then I can pretty much insulate myself from government’s failures. But things got on and that worked for a while. But about the middle of the ‘90s it became clear to me at least that there needed to exist a minimum level of functioning government for every private endeavor to be possible. I mean, no matter how wealthy you are, if you do not have a minimally functioning government, you will not be able to insulate yourself from its failures. For instance you could buy your electric generators, but you need gasoline to run Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties 1 Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Governance Traps Oral History Program Interview number: D-1 ______________________________________________________________________ it. If the government doesn’t function, you can’t build your own refinery, you can’t get your own gasoline, somebody has to produce it and a minimum system of governance should facilitate the transportation and transfer of the product to enable you to buy it. By 1996, under General (Sani) Abacha, even that broke down. So we had generators but no gasoline. We had water treatment plant, but we don’t have the chloride to treat the water. Things really got bad. That’s when it occurred to me, dawned on me that we should all try to make our government work better. Though I had no plans then to ever work for the government, but I made a silent promise that if I get the opportunity to work in the public sector I will accept it and I’ll give it my best shot. Because in 1989 and 1991, I had the opportunities to work with the administration of the then President of Nigeria (General Ibrahim Babangida) and I declined. I didn’t think I was made for public service. In 1998 General Abacha died of a heart attack, allegedly, induced by bouts of lovemaking with some Indian prostitutes. There are many versions of the story; no one knows for sure which is the truth. But he died. The person who succeeded him was the most senior military officer, a gentleman called Abdulsalami Abubakar that I knew and had other links to. He put a call to me and got other people to call me to come and work with him on transition policy and program. The way he put it was this, this man just died. I never thought I would ever be the President of Nigeria, but I am the President and I have no immediate plans about what to do. All I know is I want to organize elections and leave office because I think the military has overstayed its welcome. I need you and a few trusted people help me think through how to do that quickly. I said, “General, what do you want? In what way can we help? I’ve never worked for the government.” He said, “Well, first I want to leave, I want to organize elections and leave and secondly, I want to reengage Nigeria with the rest of the world. We are not talking to the World Bank, we are not talking to the Fund, we are not talking to anyone. Nigeria had become more or less a pariah nation and I want to engage and so I need people like you that think globally to put together an engagement plan, a re-engagement plan if you like, a reform plan and I want to hold elections and just leave within the shortest possible time.” So I said okay. He said, “How long do you think it would take a group of guys like you to put together such a plan?” I said, “Well, I believe we can do it in two weeks. We all know Nigeria’s problems, it’s not very difficult to propose solutions. Any Nigerian you talk to will tell you the problems of the country. Eighty percent of the time they all agree. The challenge has been to just solve the problems instead of complaining about them.” So I said, “I think it can be done in two weeks.” So I left my home town of Kaduna which is about 200 km from Abuja and moved to Abuja to work with the military President, General Abdulsalami Abubakar for two weeks. I ended up being there for eleven months but we organized elections and handed over to an elected president and legislature. During the period we reengaged with the International Monetary Fund, we signed a staff monitored program and I and one other person now deceased actually negotiated the Letter of Intent. Abdussalam restored and repaired our multilateral relations. During that period I also worked on drafting the privatization law along with that person, his name is Amah Iwuagwu. Unfortunately he died of lung cancer, he was a chain smoker. We lost him in 2005. We drafted the privatization law and it was signed by the head of state. The military is very efficient in making laws, limited debate and only one person - the Head of State - needs to sign the draft Use of this transcript is governed by ISS Terms of Use, available at www.princeton.edu/successfulsocieties 2 Innovations for Successful Societies Series: Governance Traps Oral History Program Interview number: D-1 ______________________________________________________________________ decree to become law, you don’t need any long debates, and the lobbying and corruption that our kind of democracy has brought. So we drafted it the way we believe it should be, and not a comma or full stop was added to it, it was signed into law. We worked with other agencies, organized elections and left.